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Every employer wants a skilled and motivated workforce. They want quality and efficiency, with every employee working as hard as possible to make the organisation as profitable as possible. In today’s economic climate, this is unfortunately not happening as frequently as most organisations would like. For example, when an employee of the organisation has a conflict with a client or the sales ledger clerk forgets to follow up a disputed debit note, senior management have a tendency to voice their opinion concerning the poor UK skilled workforce. Is it the fault of the schools, the parents, the government..? “Someone should do something about it”, it is not the organisations fault but it is their concern. 

A trained workforce can never be available at nil cost. Someone has to pay for a nations educated, productive employees. The problem is that for too long this has been seen as the responsibility of central government. The government provides free education for all between the ages of 4 and 18. For many years university education was free with students receiving maintenance grants to support their living expenses. Employers often feel they should be able to rely on this to provide a workforce with the skills they needed, and training is seen to be procedure/system based. This is a completely mistaken view of what the education system is able to do.

The compulsory education system should provide employers with a workforce that can read, write, deal with numbers and information technology. They may have been taught about the marketing mix, or how rivers are formed, how to structure an essay or solve a quadratic equation, but these skills often do not translate directly to the workplace. Teenagers have been indoctrinated to get to school for 9 O’clock and concentrate in 30 minutes slots in a classroom with 29 other students. They may have had a part time job, or had two weeks work experience. They have never experienced work day in day out, most will not have had any communication with adults who are not teachers, parents or family. Given this it generally falls to the employer to translate the school learning experience into workplace skills. Some businesses recognise this, for example many of the large firms of accountants do not like to employ accounting graduates, they prefer to hire graduates from other disciplines and train them themselves in the accounting field.

If this basic argument is accepted, then it is the responsibility of the employer to provide their workforce with the skills they need to be productive. Most employers would support this. CBEB had a series of employer breakfast events where we discussed training and workforce skills, the overwhelming conclusion was that training is vital to provide and develop skills. However, when we started to discuss cost these employers became very reticent.

It is not possible to develop the workforce at zero cost. Even the pre 18 year old educational system is not free – we all pay for this through our taxes. So, who is going to mould these young people into productive employees? It is the responsibility of the employers but, it is not possible to do this cheaply. A quality workforce costs money to develop, to maintain, and to grow. However, in the UK not all employers seem ready to accept this. They want skills, but they don’t want to pay for them.

It is true that the cost of training comes straight off the bottom line, immediately impacting on profitability. The benefit is a slow cumulative impact on margins, through increased productivity. But this needs to be seen in context - it has long-term benefits at a short-term cost.

Subsidised training is still available. The Learning and Skills Council provides a 67.5% (2006/07) subsidy on most vocational courses. Further subsidies are available through the European Social Fund (predominately for small and medium sized businesses) and other agencies. The residual amount is payable by the student or the employer. Also this type of training is focused on qualifications, many of which can provide skills that are very relevant to the modern employer; in the business and professional field employers and employees can consider qualifications such as;- 

• Association of Accounting Technicians,

• Chartered Institute of Marketing,

• Chartered Management Institute,

• Institute of Legal Executive,

• NVQ in Business Administration,

• Legal Secretaries,

to highlight just a few. 

Fees vary according to the number of hours students spend in the classroom. At a local FE college you can take a part time level 3 Legal Secretaries qualification for around £300 which would involve spending four hours a week in college between September and June. This is about 140 hours of training, which works out at about £2 per hour. Businesses can receive in-house training solutions from the FE sector, for example one candidate on a Customer Service NVQ level 3 (assuming no further subsidies are available) would cost about £350, but with ten candidates from the same organisation this can fall to about £200 per person. This may not be free but it is very good value.

If you want training in the softer skills, for example dealing with staff disputes, appraisal techniques, or managing a team, then the organisation must fund the full cost. These are skills that can never be taught at school, are often neglected within formal qualifications, but are essential for the efficient and effective working of the organisation. To obtain such training organisations often turn to the private training companies and can pay as much as £1,000 per person per day. However other options are available, the local FE college offers this type of course, and can adapt them to the specific need of the employer. A one day course in Time Management can cost as little as £650 for 15 members of staff, that is £43 per person.

In conclusion, there is no such thing as free training, but training can be value for money. Organisations must realise that to have a productive and motivated workforce, they must train their staff and this will cost money – be that in cash terms or time. No organisation that wants to grow on a long-term basis can neglect the skills of their staff. No organisation should expect someone else to pay for this.